An Old Friend
by da-angel729
Summary: He killed his first man at 22, a direct shot to the center of the target's forehead as his team rescued a CIA Agent who'd been compromised.


**Author's Notes:** Written for the **Little Big Bang** Challenge at **stargateland **on LiveJournal with a prompt of _Jack_ and _weapon_. As always, feedback and con crit appreciated!

**An Old Friend**

Weapons have always been familiar to him. He considered them friends, and learned how to use them well.

Because he had to, and he knew he was good at it.

At 10, his father explained how the rifle he kept in the closet worked, and Jack spent his entire summer disassembling, reassembling, and cleaning it. He only fired it in the last week of summer vacation, once he'd learned—according to his father—the proper respect for firearms. His father said he was a natural, and he beamed through the entire first month of school.

He'd never been a natural at anything before.

He shot his first animal at age 12, a five point buck that had his Grandpa slapping him on the back and telling everyone in the small town 20 minutes away from his cabin, and Jack went hunting every year after that until he joined the Air Force.

At 16, he entered a rifle-shooting competition at the County Fair and won, the same weapon he'd used to kill an animal four years earlier already feeling comfortable and secure. An extension of his hands.

Jack wondered, fleetingly, if that was a good thing.

But immediately after the fair, Mary Jo Harper, Homecoming Queen, decided she liked smart-ass cocky 16 year olds and took him for a drive in her brand-new GTO her dad had bought for her high school graduation. The rest of the night disappeared in sweaty hands and gasping breaths, and the thought didn't appear again for years.

Two years later, he easily qualified on his military issued M16, earning expert on his first try. Jack's instructors were pleased, and steered him toward Spec Ops and Sniper training.

He killed his first man at 22, a direct shot to the center of the target's forehead as his team rescued a CIA Agent who'd been compromised.

Jack was still trying to rinse the taste of vomit from his mouth when he made it back to camp, and his CO patted him on the back and left him alone.

By the time he was 24, the Air Force had discovered he was good at killing people. _Jack_ had discovered he was good at it. And he spent the next ten or so—he lost track—years doing just that, taking out targets and enemies.

And tried to remind himself that he was only following orders. And that the targets were the bad guys, and he was the good one.

It became harder as he got older, and assumed more responsibility, and by the time he was leading his own team he'd pushed all of that inside, so far down he could pretend it was never even there—but his rifle never failed him. He hit targets—real and paper—and rarely missed. The missions he went on, the friends he watched die, the injuries and wounds—they stretched him thin and he just gripped his weapon tighter.

Then, his life changed.

He met Sara at the local bar outside of his base in the small town she'd moved to after college, and spent six weeks trying to ask her out. Kawalsky took bets, and cleaned up after eight weeks when Sara asked him instead.

He said yes, and the day two years later when he asked her to marry him, _she_ said yes.

The ceremony was held five days after he returned from a mission, and he missed the comfortable weight of his weapon in his Blues, continually reaching for the sidearm usually held in his thigh holster.

And Jack wondered when he'd begun to _need_ the weight of the weapon on his leg, in his hands.

When he was lying in the sand, bleeding from a broken leg and dizzy with a skull fracture, he held onto his weapon, fixed Sara in his mind, and walked/crawled for nine days. It was the first time he'd been able to use something other than his rifle to push through to the goal.

It was a revelation, and he was able to loosen the death grip he kept on his rifle.

While watching Frank fly away in the chopper, he wished for a weapon. His hands were shaking from blood loss and shock, but he knew he could fire one. It was instinct now, and he was good at it.

But he didn't know if it was for himself or Frank.

Jack wished he could remember those first few days, or maybe weeks, when the Iraqis fixed him up then threw him into a cell. He remembered feeling groggy and flashes of pain, and wished, later, that he could've stayed drugged the entire four months.

His weapon stopped being comfortable the day Charlie died. The shot echoed through the air, his _son_ sprawled on the floor, the blood staining the carpet, and the gun—_his_ gun—on the floor next to him.

The panic was absolute, the worry in the waiting room overwhelming. The numbness at the doctor's "I'm sorry" grew, threatening to choke him. He watched Sara fold the grief inside, and then expand, reaching out with her grief to anyone who'd touch her. But he couldn't. And he made it through the funeral, through the burial, and didn't say a word to anyone.

Jack didn't think he could.

He spent the next months cradling the gun—formerly a friend, now an enemy—in his hands, knowing he _could_ do it. He knew how to kill, so that he would die instantaneously. He could take his own life, use the pistol he'd had for ages and that sometimes seemed an extension of his arm—even if he could barely stand the sight of it now.

He didn't want to live in a world that didn't have Charlie in it.

Then he walked through a wormhole to an alien land, help save an entire people from slavery and nearly fell in love with a kid, and realized that maybe he did want to live after all.

The next year dragged, but he spent his time at the firing range, working through painful realizations and grief that softened but never let go.

And then, suddenly, he found his footing again, on _another_ alien planet where an honorable man trusted him in minutes.

The Stargate whirled to life, the voice of the gate tech in the background announcing the Chevrons.

Jack's hands settled on his MP5 while he waited to go through the gate with SG-1, and the sidearm strapped to his leg no longer felt like an enemy.

It felt like an old friend, one he welcomed back.


End file.
